


II - Reveries

by Arcanda



Series: The Nanje Series [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, Bittersweet, Clexa, Early season 3, F/F, Gen, Healer Clarke, Heda Mama, Lexa Lives, Lexa backstory, Lexa's mom, Nanje, One Shot, Oneshot, Original Character(s), Polis, Polis Reunion, Protective Lexa, Season 3 AU, Series, Sexual Content, Sexual Tension, Star-crossed, Tortured Romance, Wanheda Angst, War Leader Issues, wanheda
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-06-15
Updated: 2016-06-15
Packaged: 2018-07-15 06:56:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7212445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arcanda/pseuds/Arcanda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“We should not be seen together.” Lexa tilted her chin higher in the air, as if to distance herself from Clarke, her body speaking for ‘The Commander,’ but her eyes, and the way they flickered towards Clarke’s, annunciated that it wasn’t what she wanted. They darted away, and she pushed at her throat. “It is too dangerous.”<br/><i>What—</i> Clarke thought with rebellion and injustice — <i>so they were just supposed to hide?</i></p><p>(Clexa. Oneshot sequel. Polis reunion AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	II - Reveries

**Author's Note:**

> **I decided to continue this (from the original Medicine oneshot,[HERE](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6068911/chapters/13910743)). Thank you for all of the wonderful feedback. I got a little attached to Nanje too. Y’all asked for it…This will be a four part series of oneshots, broken appropriately into installments. I will put spoiler heavy content warnings on individual parts/chapters in the endnotes, which WILL become important. This is the first of two installments for Part II. Threw a lot of work into this one and I’m proud of it.  
> **   
>  **(If you would like to get slightly more fucked up, listen to _Winter by Mree_ , and _Don’t Forget About Me by Cloves_.)**   
>  **CW: Sexual content.**   
>  **Enjoy.**

* * *

**PART II**

**-X-**

**i**

 

 

“We have done as much as we can tonight,” Lexa said. Her eyes were still resolved and formal in the candlelight of the war room, which Clarke had been locked in with the Commander for hours, upon hours...Alone.

Clarke kept rubbing at her eyes, but she failed to acknowledge how exhausted she was, or the dull ache in her legs and back, rebelling against her from all of the time on her feet. It must have been long into the night at this point, maybe only a couple hours left until sunrise.

“We should rest.”

Clarke nodded dully, and eyed Lexa out of the corner of her vision. The necessitated rapport between them had melted into something soft and resolved in their privacy. There was distance in Lexa’s eyes, under the tempered exhaustion that must have been there as well. She wondered if it would actually be as easy for Lexa to sleep tonight as she’d made it sound; her mother’s life hanging over her head in the darkness.

The events of the day had worked their way into Clarke. And now, with duty and productivity dissolving into the night, so had their proximity. At some point--probably earlier that day when their lips had met once again, this time on the other side of the wounds and battles past--Clarke had clung onto the version of Lexa buried at the raw center under all of the Commander's armor and steel, innocent of the hard burdens and betrayals that hull brought. Pushing the rest to the periphery, it was the only real thing keeping Clarke afloat in the whirlpool of chaos and suffering that everything around her had become right now. The only platform steady enough to set down on and move forward, do _something_ , anything so she wouldn't drown. Even if it was helping the Commander of the Coillition strategize without any clear incentive of gain, except maybe her future safety and freedom.

She was too tired of fighting to stay afloat to think, too tired to justify and rage. She needed shelter, and though shaky and dangerous, the look in Lexa's eyes earlier that day and the sentiments hidden in each cumulative gesture, were enough of an invitation to trust it was real. Clarke _needed_ it to be, she needed it to be strong enough to catch her without tearing to pieces. Or at least strong enough, just for _now_ , to pretend that it wouldn't.

“I will send guards with you to your room.” Lexa stared absently into the strategy table.

Clarke’s gaze rose. She studied Lexa silently until Lexa looked up at her. Clarke held her eyes, for a painfully long monent, the intensity that flicked on quickly binding Lexa to them. “Or…”

A weight pressed between them in the ellipses, that was warmed with the thrill of new emotion. It stuck Lexa’s vision to Clarke’s.

Clarke wet her lips and continued to look back at Lexa without saying anything; the exhaustion hung like clouds of felt around their shoulders and dampened the space in the air.

Lexa’s eyes questioned Clarke’s intention, and they were soon thrown off guard by what they discovered, ‘The Commander’ stolen out of them.

“Or…not,” Clarke suggested on her breath. The implications behind her words were obvious.

Lexa’s mouth parted momentarily, only closing when she took a grounding breath. She hadn’t been expecting something like this from Clarke. And certainly not now, not here, not so soon. A sort of wondrous desire pressed in her vision. But a formality returned to her. She swallowed, her eyes still locked on Clarke on their own accord, and there was a kind of distant indignation, an oppression, beneath her composure.

“Can’t I just come with you?” Clarke asked softly, fatigued.

Lexa’s jaw twitched. She swallowed down a more pressing wave of softness and receptivity. “We should not be seen together.” She tilted her chin higher in the air, as if to distance herself from Clarke, her body speaking for ‘The Commander,’ but her eyes, and the way they flickered towards Clarke’s, annunciated that it wasn’t what she wanted. They darted away, and she pushed at her throat. “It is too dangerous.”

_What—_ Clarke thought with rebellion and injustice — _so they were just supposed to hide?_ To sneak around in the dark corners of everything. With only flashes of intimacy from the fissures in the responsibilities that lay on their shoulders? Until they were dead anyway the next morning? Or the morning after that—or after that?

She stepped slowly towards Lexa.

“It’s too late,” she whispered.

Lexa turned her head to Clarke, question in her eyes, and strain in her composure.

Clarke reached out and gently traced her fingers over one of Lexa’s. “It’s too late to stop,” she said, her voice still a careful whisper as she finished her step forward, her eyes never leaving Lexa’s. “We’re going to suffer the consequences either way.”

Lexa’s eyes softened and fell to Clarke’s lips; a sign she was no longer in command of the world.

“They already know…your actions. That you,” Clarke’s throat tightened, “value me.”

“They do not know how _much_ ,” Lexa uttered in a different voice. Her eyes hooded a little when they flickered down to Clarke’s lips, but were soon back on Clarke’s eyes and her tone steadier again. “My people will kill me, if they think that I am weak,” she whispered back at Clarke. “If word gets out we’re…” she hesitated, wetting her lips again over nerves, “spending the night together, the people will think my judgement is compromised...I won’t be able to keep you safe.” Lexa swallowed. “Azgeda…”

Clarke’s gaze fell to Lexa’s lips before searching her eyes again, a distant scowl of concern in her own. She wasn’t ready to make any kind of commitment. She _did_ need to rest. She really, really needed to rest. And she couldn’t stand the thought of walking off in the dark and crawling into a cold bed, alone. Of staring at the ceiling with injustice and pain in her throat for the rest of the night; rising again only to watch Lexa fall and be gone forever. She couldn’t accept that—as her life.

Clarke’s hand came up softly to the side of Lexa’s face.

Lexa involuntarily closed her eyes at the touch, the sudden warmth overwhelming, and the breath tight in her chest. “Klark…” she breathed, as she wavered towards Clarke into the touch.

Clarke turned Lexa’s head just gently enough to face her.

Lexa’s eyes fluttered open, glazed with sadness, her breath tight. “It will make everything harder…” The whisper was a plea. But her head wavered forwards toward Clarke until their foreheads touched with a stabilizing release. Lexa’s hand found its way to the side of Clarke’s face as well, pressing the two of them together.

They stayed like that in the dimly lit war room, centered by their joined axis and finding reprieve in each other, floating in a joined essence.

“Ignoring it,” Clarke said, “is harder.” She caved and brushed her lips closer to Lexa’s. They were met with Lexa’s warm breath tumbling out over them; a strain in it at the sudden proximity, like a small animal being hunted. “It’s harder…” Clarke barely murmured, and she brought their lips together.

Tired, groggy, and languid: she wasn’t prepared for the molten crackle that met her there. The way it lobbed into her chest, and made it pulsate and glow, as Lexa’s lips moved firmly over hers.

In it, something was being expressed from Lexa, in the spark between their cells, that was cloying, heavy, and heart-wrenching, but simultaneously on fire with the promise of life.

Clarke was surprised when it picked up; when the warmth billowed over them and prompted her to press back into the concentrated spaces, the hotspots, where their bodies met. She was surprised when Lexa gave into it and met her return, not shying away from the passion that had been stewing inside of them; that had been ferried away in a lock-box at the base of their bellies for so long.

Clarke pulled back, her eyes completely glazed, forehead against Lexa. She breathed, brusk, against Lexa’s lips, “The door’s locked…” As she said it, her hand slipped into the fold in Lexa’s shirt above her belt.

Lexa’s cheeks went red, transfixed on Clarke, their breath puffing against one another and entwining in the air between their lips. Lexa shuddered and closed her eyes when Clarke’s hand made it under her shirt, slipping its way towards the curve of her hip, while searching in a clumsy slowness through the layers of fabric for a way to skin.

Clarke had a brief vision of climbing on top of Lexa right here on the war table—swiping the war models to the floor and demolishing what was left of the game-board with their bodies. Or even just claiming the moment, under the table, on the floor.

But everything was sharp corners, and hardness, and chill. And her body ached with fatigue, crying out for some kind of stability, and warmth. She didn’t think she could function again another day without that. “Take me..back to your bed…” Clarke choked out, surprising herself.

A silent-groan ripped through Lexa’s brow, and her eyes cleared open in a pained smolder, her breath syrupy against Clarke’s lips. She struggled against the fog in her eyes. Her head lolled against Clarke’s, as she shook it tightly, looking unlaced. “We’ll..be seen…”

“Send away the guards,” Clarke breathed.

Lexa looked pleadingly into her eyes. She shook her head at the notion of leaving themselves unprotected.

“We can make it look like we’re still working…”

But Lexa’s gaze was hardening up.

“Am I going to have to climb in your window?” Clarke was tired, annoyed, and losing her patience with reality.

“It is a fifty story drop. You will do no such thing.”

“I just want to sleep,” Clarke mumbled, starting to feel the press of multiple kinds of weight on her shoulders, she leaned more openly towards Lexa for support. “I just wanna sleep…”

Lexa was more aware of the non-verbal cues than Clarke was. A gentle palm came up behind Clarke’s neck to embrace her, accompanied by a supportive _hush —_ that sent a windmill moving at the base of Clarke’s gut, and made her feel as if parts of herself were floating. Lexa stabilized them that way for a moment, with Clarke’s head bent into the side of her neck. The whole while, Clarke dreaded the looming second it would be taken away; replaced by something practical. By a chill, and a lonesome injustice.

The hush settled into them, calming the way the room had been spinning around them and their exchange, and settling into the center of it all where they rested. Clarke ached to attach herself in a way she couldn’t be removed. It manifested only with the force of intent she softly laid her head against Lexa.

“Come to my room after a moment…” Lexa whispered. “I will inform the guards to expect you. Shortly after, I’ll relieve them for fresh ones, who will not know you are already there. If you—If you don’t…” she said, “I will understand…”

Clarke pulled back with a painstaking slowness, heads side by side, until she could see into Lexa’s eyes. She wanted to say she wouldn’t miss it for anything. But she knew, in this world, that would be an untruth, and she said nothing instead.

 

* * *

 

 

Clarke was so beat that, once in the safety of Lexa’s chambers, she was already sliding quickly onto the bed, having made a beeline for it without much thought or formality. The second her body touched base with the bed’s surface she was so grateful for its existence, she wrote it a silent love-letter with her breath in the fog of delirium behind her eyes.

Lexa was fiddling at the side of the room now: Clarke’s actions had set the tone, on both ends, for the simple gratitude of being horizontal and not alone. The weight of the moment, the anticipation and uncertainty of something so simple, clung in the air between them, and kept Clarke lucid and waiting on Lexa.

Clarke watched her from the bed, Lexa’s back turned to her, as she undid her armor.

“Do you, want help?” Clarke’s voice was much more brusk when it came out than she’d expected or intended, her unconscious mind having already gone to places she had yet to imagine before the words were out of her mouth.

Lexa hesitated on the laces she was loosening on her armor. Though her back was still turned, her eyes darted back towards Clarke and her chin quirked up a little, before she resumed and slipped off the leather wrist brace. Lexa was nervous.

It made Clarke want to unnerve her more.

Clarke had thought she’d meant it in a practical manner, just to be helpful. But the thought of actually undressing Lexa of her armor, while she just stood there, was warm, and smoggy, and clung to the space behind her nose. And she was caught now by how tedious it must be to have those extra layers between you and the world all the time; and how Lexa wore them like a second skin.

“No need to get up, Klark.”

“Then come here.” Clarke deadpanned, gaze fixed on the back of Lexa’s head.

Lexa froze. She stayed that way for a moment before glancing back at Clarke. She hesitated, her movements slow. There was a long moment before she floated to the side of the bed.

Clarke looked Lexa in the eye before she reached out towards her, not truly righting herself to get there. She slipped the tips of her fingers under the first buckle that crossed Lexa’s abdomen. Her eyes returned to Lexa’s as they curled around the leather, and she gently tugged forward until Lexa’s thighs bumped against the bed, her center of gravity following Clarke’s hand as far as she could lean.

The look Clarke received, as Lexa swallowed, was worth it.

Clarke held onto the strap as she started to pull the remaining laces on Lexa’s armor apart and loosened them, leaving them strewn. As she did it she kept looking back up at Lexa, whose eyes were fixed on her.

The air between them was heavy.

Clarke was surprised to find her fingers were actually trembling, and hoped she could play it off as the chill in the air, which seeped into the hearth-warmed room past the heavy leather curtains pinned up between them and the rest of the city of Polis.  Clarke’s eyes shot up to Lexa’s and stuck there, her fingers slowly moving to undo the buckles.

Lexa’s eyes were so hooded; she was in a trance.

The longer they looked at each other, the more magnified every little movement of Clarke’s hands became, the thinner the air, and the heavier and more blatant the implications that fell out into it became. It hung around them through the smog in Clarke’s eyes, naked and absent of formality. Clarke loosened the second buckle, and Lexa’s lips gently parted. Something released around them with the unhinged strap, and Lexa’s eyes, somehow, became even more hooded and intimate.

Still looking at Lexa, Clarke moved to the last buckle, then looked down in order to unpin the leather. She slowly wrapped her fingers around its entirety this time, tucking them underneath, her knuckles brushing the warmth of Lexa’s body. She was holding the two of them together, and she wasn’t going to let go. Clarke’s lips parted even further. Her eyes popped back, unmercifully to Lexa’s, who now seemed somewhat unsteady. Clarke watched her carefully, deliberately, on every breath, as she slowly curled her middle finger up, against Lexa. She skated it back and forth across Lexa’s abdomen, a tender caress.

It unsteadied Lexa, her bottom lip falling further with a shudder. Her hips wavered imperceptibly forward, further against the bed, and her shoulders dropped. She was transfixed on Clarke, chest rising softly up and down, and her eyes pliable like the rest of her body as it leaned precariously into the bed.

Clarke glanced down at her own hand and back into Lexa’s eyes again—at her lips—her own breath a little labored.

Lexa’s eyes pressed into hers.

Clarke’s gaze darted to Lexa’s lips in question and all she received in reply was a steady look. She wavered towards Lexa, asking for the kiss. A threshold moment. Ready to crush these berries plucked between them—and she was going to do it—she tugged ever so gently on the strap to pull Lexa towards her and began to dip forward.

But just as subtly, Lexa’s head wavered back, her eyes coming back to Clarke’s from where they had been on her lips. She took a long steadying breath that was tight and shaky. Her eyes cleared but only a little; just enough. “You should rest…” she whispered.

Clarke hesitated to pull back as well, questioning Lexa’s eyes. Ready to rebel against the notion.

Until a warm hand pressed fully against the side of her face. It intimated, in its touch, everything she was so longing to crawl inside of at a visceral level and disappear into right now, and silenced the steam and rebellion that had risen up inside of Clarke. She nodded against Lexa’s hand, her lips still parted, and they exchanged a soft look before pulling away.

Clarke settled back into the far side of the bed. She moved the covers over her, leaving plenty of unruffled space beside her for Lexa to crawl into with a certain measure of physical privacy. Clarke was comfortable—more than happy for the absolution in being horizontal in a real bed, finally—and warmed in more ways than one.

Lexa rushed methodically—maybe even slightly awkward, so Clarke averted her eyes—to slough off enough clothing to comfortably sleep without bothering to change into anything else.

Content, Clarke watched Lexa as she started to slip as respectfully as possible under the covers, still awkward. Tousled with a delirium from lack of rest, and the basic, vital need for her senses to be soothed, Clarke chuckled groggily to herself. “Your mom told me to ‘bed’ you,” she mumbled, amused.

Lexa froze where she was settling into the covers. She jerked around to face Clarke, her eyes wide as hell; mortified. “She said what to you…?”

Clarke smiled vaguely at the reaction, a laugh burbling from her throat. For a moment Lexa was nothing but a flustered teenager.  

But Lexa’s countenance quickly sobered and changed. “Kl…” Her lips went thin and she stuffed the covers back off of her onto the bed, stiffly, and started to get out of it. Her voice was methodical and somber again, though struggling for purchase. “Klark, you are under no kind of obligation to…”

Another echo of a chuckle slipped past Clarke’s lips and she stilled Lexa’s progress with a hand to her arm.  “Hey…” she looked at Lexa through woozy eyes, “I’m here because I wanna be. That’s the only reason.” Her fingers slowly ran down Lexa’s wrist: Lexa who was open, and nervous. “I’m here. So,” she tugged gently, “come here.”

 

* * *

 

  

Clarke’s intention to ‘just sleep’ had been wholesome, and Lexa’s body—the distance having slowly closed until it was pressed beside hers—was a gift equivalent to the parting of the seas.

That had been enough.

Until it wasn’t.

The loom of danger and the fleetingness of time had pressed their gentle touches, their skin, more adamantly together. Until their was a desperation pleading at the strength in the simple places they touched—thumbs over the backs of hands, ankles against insteps, thighs against the backs of knees—that reached a fever pitch, boiling up behind the frame laid by their hip bones, and it dispelled any say, or exhaustion, from their minds.

Clarke was the one to turn fully against Lexa to burry her face in her throat, and start kissing up the base of her neck in a proposition of hot breath—that only took one hanging, stuttered hiccup of time to earn her a languid, involuntary gasp, and then be responded to, fervently.

It was overwhelming. It was all consuming. It was hot and soft and right.

So right that the vestiges of anger still clinging to the wings of Clarke’s mind slipped right away with the fear, and all other superficial concerns.

The hot untamed breath in her ear, the softness of Lexa’s skin, something finally breaking under her tongue. The press of Lexa’s mouth dragging against her neck—always lead with passion—that slowly became bolder and more open. Until it bloomed forth into wetness.

And took Clarke with it like melting wax.

Trailing up to her ear, down into the soft space under her arm beside her breast—desperate but restrained and unassuming, a tamed reverence, which was simultaneously full of such a vacuum of love, they were feeble not to lose themselves completely to it. The touches—like the deliberate tangling of their fingers—were more intimate than everything else.  Gasps that also tangled together at every new touch. The breathy moans as they pressed their bodies flush, with _nothing_ left between them.

Clarke thought she could lose herself sustained in that moment forever. She thought her mind would reach a fever pitch and drown in the slickness that blossomed between them.

The noises Lexa made when she came, when Clarke was filling her, were addictive.

They filtered out of Lexa into Clarke's ear and lodged there, echoing through in her brain—long, long after—hanging, like a persistent, low-lying fog: a wanton, gasping moan that seemed to roll on forever, and pulled from the deepest reaches of her throat with an earthy rasp.

It was jarring for _how_ wanton, how open and human it was when, despite its tempered volume, it filled up Clarke's ears, and didn't stop—pressing Clarke’s movements forward, harder, faster, more heartfelt and past the point of exhaustion she thought was possible.

And there was the moment her name burbled out, sandwiched in the middle on the skate of the air in that noise like a brand, … _Klark._ It was all _beyond_ the sounds someone could make when they were in agony. And the ease, the comfort, with which it fell out of Lexa was startling. The way Lexa looked at her afterwards as they gasped for breath, bodies spent of all surplus energy in their cells...was like Clarke was some divine hallucination.

That sound, it was something Clarke wanted to brand into her mind, if nothing else because she couldn’t do it with smells. She wanted to be able to summon it every time she was within the reach of Lexa’s aura: When there was ‘Public’. When there was ‘Heda’. When there was war.

To remind herself.

To believe.

 

 

**x**

_**(tbc)**_


End file.
